Note: Laser wavelength precision measurement based on a laser synthetic wavelength interferometer.

A laser wavelength precision measurement method is presented based on the laser synthetic wavelength interferometer (LSWI). According to the linear relation between the displacements of measurement and reference arms in the interferometer, the synthetic wavelength produced by an unknown wavelength and a reference wavelength can be measured by detecting the phase coincidences of two interference signals. The advantage of the method is that a larger synthetic wavelength resulting from an unknown wavelength very close to the reference wavelength can be easily determined according to the linear relation in the interferometer. Then the unknown wavelength is derived according to the one-to-one corresponding relationship between single wavelength and synthetic wavelength. Wavelengths of an external cavity diode laser and two He-Ne lasers were determined experimentally. The experimental results show that the proposed method is able to realize a relative uncertainty on the order of 10(-8).